What Role Should the USA Take in the Middle East Today
Aaron Zappaz
The west has played many different roles in the Middle East from the
end of the Ottoman Empire, and the United States has increasingly
become part of these activities. Many, but not all, of these roles have
been negative, destructive, and even abusive. None of the policies have
been products of monolithic governments, but the fact that not all
officials and not all citizens are behind any given policy is
generally unclear to those who see only the various action arms
of government at work. Furthermore, as a diverse population of
individuals and participants in non-governmental organizations, the
United States also acts in many ways, good and bad.
Any role that the United States ought to play in the Middle East is, as
Thomas Friedman has pointed out, one that avoids acting in
ignorance, because to do so is strongly counterproductive.
Precipitous military entry into Iraq and precipitous exit from Iraq,
both had very bad outcomes. Once into a multi-factor complex with loose
links among actors, the nonlinear nature of interactions forces
planners to be constantly fighting against a flood tide of vital
changes., and getting out of this complex interplay of forces without
doing even greater damage is not easy.
As soon as actions by the West had taken away Saddam’s iron control,
open conflict broke out among three main populations that have long
struggled against each other. Within those three groups, members of the
Shia population had no prior opportunities to develop governance
capabilities, and those with leadership potentials have been dealt with
severely by Saddam’s police. Members of the Kurdish population have
done well to avail themselves of opportunities to develop their
leadership potentials (mostly by their getting educated abroad), and
among the Shia the found competencies rest mostly with the leadership
of the armed forces. Other commentators have already fully described
the blunders of early-stage US interventions. Most analyses of the
resulting battlefield have stopped at this point, but there are other
significant factors that provide a foundation and sources of motivation
for the undesiirable phenomena that are not easily observed.
Bronisław Malinowski observed that in tranquil environments not much
attention is paid to the supernatural, but in times and places of
turmoil, when there are no dependable ways to security, the influence
of the supernatural looms large. In the Middle East it appears that
religion and religious differences act as major sources of
strife. In addition to war, economic deprivation and the realization of
relative poverty in contrast to other groups can potentiate the
perceived need for divine intervention to put things to rights.
The cultural features of the several fragile communities in the Middle
East are fairly well known on a superficial level, but much needs to be
determined by careful research due to the relevance of these motivating
factors to the general state of strife that currently prevails. Some
cultures program young people for resilience, and other cultures
instill hidden pitfalls in their character structures. Under conditions
of extreme stresses, the pitfalls are more likely to manifest
themselves in non-adaptive behavior. Non-adaptive behavior can have a
powerful influence when it is manifested in many people in external
ways that affect the community.
When non-adaptive cultural features manifest themselves in a community
under stress, the individuals become more easily used by manipulative
leaders, another factor favoring turmoil and destruction.
One of the functions of all religions that have thrived in the
Middle East is to control people. Some of the goals of control are
explicitly stated in the holy texts of a given religion. During periods
of tranquility, clerical abuses of the religion may be limited to
things that are terrible on the level of individuals, e.g., sexual
abuse of children by priests, but do not directly drag the majority of
the community into counterproductive activities. Periods of turmoil and
disorder tend to put control more strongly in the hands of religious
leaders who counsel punitive acts and campaigns of revenge.
Religious factors can prod individuals under stress into cult-like
subservience to manipulative leaders, and manipulative leaders can work
on the community to exacerbate stress factors, thus driving more
followers into their organizations.
One of the main functions of culture is to get control of one’s own
children so that they will not initiate conflicts with other people and
so that they will behave nicely within the family. Every family
probably does these things somewhat differently, but every culture has
group expectations that at least inform people of how others will react
to their parenting behavior and to the values they instill into their
children. Most if not all cultures also have effective enforcement
measures available to them, if only of a punitive sort.
When the parenting methods are very successful, children generally do
well and do not experience difficulties in life that were
unintentionally created by their parents. When parents impose
unreasonable expectations, and when parents use aversive conditioning
to force behavioral outcomes on children, the results for their
offspring, when they become adults, may include strong dysfunctional
components. For instance, both the Jewish culture and the Chinese
culture permit children to consume small, age-appropriate, quantities
of wine on ceremonial occasions. These cultures have been observed to
have a low level of alcoholism. However, cultures such as those of Jews
and Christians have (especially in the pre-Freud period) many problems
due to their imposing punishments for failing to control excretory
functions at a time when their children were neurophysiologically
incapable of exerting such control. Traditional Chinese culture, on the
other hand, uses gentle guidance and rewards, and in so doing lays up
no psychological dysfunctions for these children to contend with as
adults.
Counterproductive ways of child rearing leave land mines of anger and
even rage that, paradoxically, will be directed against the child
himself or herself, and not at the toxic conditioning processes used by
the parents. Given time to fester, these feelings may become directed
outward at people who seem to exemplify the damaged person’s own
negative but hidden characteristics, but frequently not at their
abusive parents. These children grow up to hate themselves and/or other
people who dare openly to be and openly to dare to do what the damaged
individuals must hide. The ones whom they learn to hate can do nothing
to improve relationships because the ones who persecute them really are
redirecting their self hatred outwards, and their self hatred is
extremely difficult to cure. There is no way to stop the attacks of
that figure in the mirror except by ceasing one’s own aggressions.
In extreme cases, hatred instilled for what one inescapably is as a
human primate can lead to self-destructive impulses and behavior, and
can even lead to suicide. If the individual can succeed in directing
these forces outward, he or she becomes a powerful force in the world,
but often innocent people or groups get attacked and injured or even
killed as a result.
A child who has been stigmatized as being “a nasty, greedy brat,” will
be unable to eliminate the natural desire for sugar, fat, and other
satisfying foods. However, given that his or her family situation is as
it is, he or she will of necessity hide these desires from others, and
even attempt to deny their presence in himself or herself. Children
can, in these kinds of situations, grow up with many kinds of
suppressed “evil” impulses.
In order to deny the presence of these “evil” impulses in themselves,
people may not only suppress awareness of their activity within
themselves, but also project these impulses and “bad intentions” onto
other people. To be more convincing in their denial of their possession
of these impulses, they may attack others whom they perceive as
exhibiting them.
Obviously, if everybody feels hunger or other deprivations, and if
everybody is forced by circumstances of their childrearing to deny
their presence in themselves, then the almost certain result will be
that they all will tend to project and/or perceive the forbidden
impulses in others and attack them as “deviants” or as “sinners.”
When everybody attributes ill intent, bad motivations, etc., to others,
then the tendency will be to form cliques, each of which may suppress
recognition of forbidden desires in group members and attack them in
all out-groups, and it is likely that one subset of the general
population will be at the bottom of the pecking order that emerges.
When the George W. Bush administration attempted to interfere in Iraq
in a helpful way, they demonstrated competency in direct military
actions. However, they could not even handle basic infrastructure
issues such as the electric power grids for cities and surrounding
regions. It is seeking for oneself a resounding defeat to expect a
political regime dedicated to survival in an episodic life struggle
battle conducted in four year spans to be able to understand and
provide for the psychological and sociological “infrastructure”
requirements of the people of a severely dysfunctional region, problems
that may take generations to solve.
In the United States there are regions and families whose feuds and
vendettas have become legendary. No government could simply tell them
to reconstitute their own character structures from the ground up. Any
such governmental action would provoke ever-stiffening resistance. I
think the motivation for change must come from within. I see evidence
of such initiatives being made, but also note how often violence is
directed toward those who are in search of better ways. It seems clear
to me that any people, at any level of organization, might be able to
make positive contributions to the revitalization of these foundational
institutions and practices, providing that any help be given in
appropriate ways.
Specifically, I see a great need to foster the development of skillful
patriotic leaders who can win the allegiance of people across all
existing sectarian and party lines. I also see a great need for the
support of individuals whose goal in life is to ameliorate the cultural
factors that do harm to infants, children, and even adults (factors
that often get carried over into religions and attributed to God no
matter how toxic they may be). Good leadership depends on being
responsive to the real needs of the community.
Any individual who becomes a member of a community, or at least an
accepted guest who desires the well-being of that community, must deal
with the real causes of problems in order to effect improvements in the
life of that community.
My untrammeled hunger puts your orchard and your apples in danger of
predations. My untrammeled sexuality puts your family and your
daughters in danger of creating a fatherless child for your family to
nurture. My untrammeled fear puts your family and your possessions in
danger of my frantic and heedless actions to try to secure my own
continued existence and prosperity. My untrammeled anger will lead to
all kinds of bad results.
All individuals have both the potential to be good for others and to be
bad for others. All societies have to deal with this situation. They
develop cultures and religions that function to ameliorate the
potentials for conflict. Needing to organize people for other kinds of
cooperative enterprises, they generally will also have governmental
measures for dealing with conflicts, for punishing people who will not
respond to the gentler methodologies used by culture and religion.
People of good will, regardless of nationality or other distinguishing
characteristics, can make good progress only if the fundamental springs
of violent action are adequately attenuated and eusocial motivations
are provided with proper channels for expression and development.
Ashoka first became known as a very competent military leader and a
conqueror, but subsequently he became renown for teaching his conquered
nation the best practices for peace, harmony, good social cohesion
across all differences present across India, etc. The Middle East needs
people today who can take up these tasks, provide equality under the
law to all people, and minimize the countervailing forces of savage
cultural tailings, group selfishness, ignorance, and fear.
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